Tag: Aberdeen

We’re very pleased to announce that the Aberdeen Cycle Forum has received funding from Cycling UK to run some cycling lessons for adults. These will be held in the morning on Saturday 28th September from 9am – 12pm.

We’ll run two sessions in parallel – one for absolute beginners who have never ridden a bike before and another for people who know how to ride but haven’t ridden for a long time and want to brush up on their skills. A bikeability instructor from Adventure Aberdeen will be taking the lessons along with one of our own members, Nathan Gore, who is a bikeability volunteer.

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An annual roadside count of commuting cyclists has been carried out by Aberdeen Cycle Forum volunteers for more than 10 years. The count takes place during morning commuting time at 16 locations across the city.

Almost 1,000 cyclists were counted but numbers are fairly static in comparison with previous years and there is no sign of the significant upward trend that campaigners would like to see and which is now happening in many other cities. Indeed numbers are 20% lower this year when compared with a peak in 2016. Two of the three top results are for Aberdeen’s traffic-free routes on the Deeside Way and the ‘Shell’ path near Abbotswell Road.

Also, as in previous years, the proportion of female cyclists is only one fifth of the total which is significant because female riders are thought to be more risk-averse. This reinforces the idea that many people feel the city’s streets are currently too dangerous to cycle on because of the volume and speed of traffic.

There is a strong case for investing in high-quality segregated routes for cyclists and experience elsewhere has shown that the return in public benefits is at least £5 for every £1 invested. However routes need to be properly designed and route priorities carefully selected. The count data shows that some of Aberdeen’s recent investment in segregated routes such as on the Riverside, Ellon Road, and the Jubilee Bridge are not yet being well used.

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The Aberdeen Cycle Forum is excited to release this visualisation for a bike path on King Street, Aberdeen. This follows on from our design competition for King Street which generated some very high quality, professional submissions. We took those designs, and with funding from LUSH, transformed them into a 3D visualisation.

Visualisations excite and inspire us to see what could be possible in our city. Aberdeen has enormous potential for cycling with its wide streetscapes and beautiful, grand granite buildings. It’s reasonably flat and has a climate that’s cycle-friendly all year round. All that’s needed is the right infrastructure.

This visualisation is just one possible design for a bike path on King Street. It doesn’t have to look exactly like this but what’s important is that all modes of transport have their own space – cars have their own space, bicycles have their own space, and pedestrians have their own space.

Through this visualisation we want to convey that cycling infrastructure is for everyone. It’s for men and women cycling to work, it’s for children cycling to school, it’s for people with disabilities on disability scooters, it’s for people who want to roller-blade to the shops or beach. With the right infrastructure we’ll see groups of people from our community we wouldn’t have otherwise seen, using active travel as their mode of transport.

What next? We have submitted the designs from the competition to the council along with this visualisation which was favourably received. King Street extends the Union Street bike path petition which is still before the council and which will be included in the SUMP (sustainable urban mobility plan) report the council hope to have out for public consultation next month. We’ll keep you posted!

Next we plan to print some postcards of the King Street visualisations which people can post to the council. We’ll let you know when these are available and where you can get one.

If you want to donate to our campaign then please click the donate button on our website.

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I’m a bit late getting this recap post up but that shouldn’t be interpreted as an unsuccessful event. This year’s Pedal on Parliament was the best I’ve been to and this was largely due to the different route we did. Instead of cycling in one direction from A to B we cycled a circuit around the centre of town.

We all met outside Marischal College at 11am on Sunday and cycled first down Upper Kirkgate, then left onto Union Terrace, left onto Union Street, left onto Broad Street and back to Marischal College. We cycled this circuit over and over for one hour. I think I cycled 6 or 7 laps. I lost count at about 5. Others probably cycled more because I do remember being overtaken a few times.

There were just over 100 of us – people from Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire, of all ages, shapes, and sizes and riding all kinds of bikes. There were cargo bikes, electric bikes, tandem bikes, and even a couple of cool-looking Eliptigos. There were children with the youngest being 6 years old.

Was it a success? In terms of enjoyment value, definitely! Will we see positive action from the local authority? If I didn’t think it would help then I wouldn’t bother and I would give up all hope. I do think these events are important and collectively, with other campaigns, they will help to steer direction towards an Aberdeen that is a safe place to cycle for everyone, adults and children alike.

What’s next for Aberdeen Cycle Forum? We’ve had a great year so far with the King Street Design Competition and Pedal on Parliament. Later this month we’ll be meeting with the Aberdeen City Council to hand over the winning designs from the King Street Design Competition and get an update on the Union Street bike path petition. We also received some funding from LUSH for an exciting new project! Make sure you subscribe to our blog to hear updates about this.

The Aberdeen Cycle Forum is planning a ride in the centre of our city at the end of this month to highlight the need for segregated cycling infrastructure in Aberdeen. It’s not good enough to put cyclists in bus lanes or to erect share and care signs. To make cycling accessible for everyone we need segregated cycling infrastructure. The question we need to ask ourselves is, “Can an unaccompanied 12-year-old cycle safely here?” and if the answer is no, we have work to do.

We’ll be meeting at 11am outside Marischal College and cycling a circuit, going down Upperkirgate first. You can ride the circuit as many times as you like and can go at whatever pace is comfortable. With hundreds of us all cycling together it will be safe because of the safety in numbers effect.

Feel free to dress-up or decorate your bike. This is a demonstration about the lack of infrastructure for cycling but we want it to be fun at the same time.

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We are pleased to announce that the Aberdeen Cycle Forum has a new Chair and a new Campaigns and Communications Secretary. Gavin Clark was appointed chair at the September meeting. Here’s his bio:

Gavin Clark

I’ve been involved with the Forum to a greater or lesser extent since its early days, becoming Secretary in 2015 and now Chair/Convenor.

I’ve lived in Aberdeen since 1996, but having grown up just 40 miles away I’m almost a proper local. My first memories of cycling here, as a student in the early 1980s, are of being knocked off by a right-turning car on George St, and of having a wheel stolen from my bike outside the University. Unfortunately those are experiences which students today are still likely to have!

To me, cycling is a cheap and reliable way to get around the city but also my main hobby, taking off on longer rides into Aberdeenshire’s beautiful countryside most weekends. Of course it keeps me fit and as I work for an environmental agency, the benefits of ‘clean’ travel aren’t lost on me either.

I’m lucky that half of my 3 mile daily commute is on traffic-free routes: the stretch along the River Dee opposite Duthie Park is a favourite part of my commute. But I know that cycling in the city and being mixed up in traffic can be a very unpleasant, off-putting and sometimes dangerous experience. I’d love to see that change, and in reality it has to if more people are going to get on their bikes more often.

Rachel Martin has taken on the role of Campaigns and Communications Secretary. Here’s her bio:

Rachel Martin

I’m originally from Australia but love the climate, culture, and scenery of Scotland and feel lucky to call Aberdeen my home since 2014. I got my first taste of commuter cycling as a 19-year-old living in Cambridge, UK. I was struck by how much it enhanced my quality of life – the freedom, the exercise, the independence – and have tried to recreate that in all the places I’ve lived since then.

When my children came along cycling became more challenging. Being a parent changes our perception of risk and how much risk we’re prepared to accept. My children are 11 and 8 years old and perfectly capable of riding their own bikes but our unsafe roads mean I ferry them around Aberdeen on a cargo bike. This is why I got involved in cycling advocacy: I want my children to be safe cycling around our city.

We are a car-free family who walk and cycle everywhere. For longer trips we take the train or book a car-club car. I love that active travel gives us exercise everyday without having to make a special effort to fit exercise in. It’s also free and doesn’t produce any toxic emissions. But more than any other reason, cycling is fun and I hope I’m still doing it when I’m 90.

The role of secretary is currently vacant. If anyone would like to take this on then please contact us or come to our next monthly meeting on Tuesday 30th October at 7:30pm. Venue TBA.

The people of Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire gathered outside Marischal College today to protest the lack of provision for cycling on the new AWPR – a bypass around Aberdeen. The AWPR has been in the plans for decades and it was more than 20 years ago that Cycling UK argued in favour of a segregated bike path on the road, if and when it got built. The Aberdeen Cycle Forum has also always been in favour of a segregated bike path. Sadly, they built the road and didn’t put in a bike path. Not only that but the new road has made conditions worse for cyclists in the region where is crosses the much-loved Deeside Way and also the Westhill cycle path. People are angry and frustrated and turned up to have their voice heard at the protest today.

Representatives of the media were also there: BBC Scotland Radio, The Press & Journal, The Evening Express, and STV.

We know that money is not a blocker. The money is there but the local authority needs to apply to spend it. We want this money used to build segregated bike paths so that everyone can cycle in safety and we want all new road projects to include plans for segregated bike paths in the design.